SOS Children's Village Quilpué

Quilpué’s advantageous location, just 20 km from the metropolis of Valparaíso, has done much for the town’s economy and the wellbeing of its population. Illiteracy has almost been eradicated, and great inroads have been made regarding gender equality. However, many families in the Valparaíso region continue to live in far more precarious conditions.

What we do in Quilpué

SOS Children’s Villages began its work in Quilpué in 1983. For children from the area who are no longer able to live with their parents, 16 SOS families can provide a loving home for up to 144 children. In each family, the children live with their brothers and sisters and are affectionately cared for by their SOS mother.

The children who grow up in the SOS Children’s Village attend schools and kindergartens in the vicinity, ensuring that they are very much integrated into the local community from a young age.

When young people from the children’s village are ready to leave their family in order to complete their secondary education or vocational training, our SOS Youth programme makes shared accommodation available for them. Young people from the children’s villages in Quilpé, Valparaíso, and Viña del Mar come and live here together. With the support of qualified counsellors, they learn to take responsibility, plan their future and prepare for independent adult life.

1Villages

86Orphaned and Abandoned Children

1Youth Facilities

12Youths in our care

Quilpué has accomplished great improvements in recent years

SOS Children's Village Quilpué is located just outside the city of Quilpué in central Chile, in the Marga-Marga province in the Valparaíso region.

Quilpué is located just 20 km from Valparaiso, and is even on the city’s underground line. Quilpué has a population of roughly 150,000 inhabitants. The commercial and service sectors make for the bulk of employment in the region, consisting mainly of small and medium sized businesses.

Several social development programmes have been active in Quilpué in recent years, investing heavily in reducing poverty, ensuring education, improving homes and health care. Almost 80 per cent of the roads here are paved now. Much progress has been achieved and Quilpué seems very much on track for reaching its Millennium Development Goals in 2015.

The Valparaíso region is one of extreme contrasts

However, although living conditions for people in Quilpué itself have improved greatly in recent years, great inequality continues to exist in the Valparaíso region overall. Poverty levels, for example, are fairly low in Quilpué, at 10.7 per cent, but in neighbouring communities in the region, just a few kilometres away, they can be as high as 25 per cent.

A number of other factors have also improved in Quilpué in recent years, while some communities severely lag behind. In Quilpué, over 42 per cent of candidates in local elections are women, but in ten other communities in the region that percentage is zero. Similar discrepancies exist when it comes to maternal health, teenage pregnancy, and malnourishment in children under the age of six.

Much work also remains to be done as concerns raising awareness of children’s rights in the region. The SOS Children’s Village in Quilpué is the only one in Valparaíso, and the support we can provide to children who have lost parental care, are in danger of losing it, or live in family situations that are no longer tenable, is therefore crucial to these children’s lives.